Books: Importance of Being Smith

THE RASH ACT—Ford Madox Ford—Long & Smith ($2.50).

It was a nice morning for a suicide. Henry Martin Aluin Smith was fed up with life, and he had everything figured out. He was tired of fighting his bouncing old Philistine of a father, candy tycoon of Springfield, Ohio; tired of trying unsuccessfully to get any more money out of him. He had been through the War, had been married and divorced. Last night he had spent his last spare sou. Not for any tragic reason but because there seemed to be nothing else to do he planned to step out of his hired boat into the water of the little Riviera harbor.

Night before he had bumped into an old acquaintance, also named Smith, had spent a queer evening with him. Smith II, though rich beyond avarice’s dreams, though magnetic to women, was also, it appeared, contemplating suicide. Smith I was too intent on his own plans to pay much attention to him. Next morning he methodically carried them out; but just when he was about to take the fatal step a storm struck, and instinctively he tried to save the boat. By the time he had succeeded he was too exhausted to kill himself that day. Furthermore, he stumbled on Smith II’s successfully suicided corpse, and in the ensuing comedy of errors was mistaken for Smith II. Finding that he had inherited riches, ease and the dead man’s unwanted but comforting mistress, he decided that one suicide in the Smith family was enough for the moment.

Author Ford Madox Ford, an almost U. S.-acclimatized Britisher, still makes little leaps in the dark when he comes to some Americanisms. He writes of a woman getting drunk as “canning herself”; makes Hero Smith figure out that the foreign word “valise” means “grip”; but neglects to translate “spanner” into monkey wrench.”